Week 4 Showcase Game: Notre Dame-Georgia

The color, passion and diversity of college football will be on full display this Saturday night in Athens, Georgia.

There are two sets of hedges between the stands and the playing field in Sanford Stadium, the home of the Georgia Bulldogs. Therefore, when a visiting team travels to Athens, it is said that the team is going “Between the Hedges.” Notre Dame gets that opportunity this week.

This is the return game in a home-and-home pair of games. The first game was in 2017, with Georgia winning on Notre Dame’s home field in South Bend, Indiana, 20-19. Georgia used that win to go all the way to the College Football Playoff National Championship Game.

This game is no less important. The winner has a great chance to make the College Football Playoff. The loser will suffer a hugely damaging blow to its playoff hopes. It would almost certainly have to run the table the rest of the season to have a realistic playoff chance. (It would need help in addition to winning its remaining games.)

I will get to the 2019 teams and the particulars of this game in a moment. Before I do that, I want you to appreciate why this game is so special.

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Notre Dame is the most famous college football team of all time. Google “Grantland Rice Four Horsemen” to understand how the legend of Notre Dame football began.

Because Notre Dame has so often been a media darling in the United States, the Fighting Irish – like other media darlings – has generated resentment from other Americans. Notre Dame is a much-loved and much-hated team, right there with the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Lakers, and Dallas Cowboys.

While Michigan and Purdue have played Notre Dame many times over the years (in Notre Dame’s region of the country), one can make the case that the Deep South hates Notre Dame more than other regions. This is partly because Notre Dame has often stood in the way of a Southern team’s football ambitions, but another reality is that the heavily Protestant Southern United States didn’t easily warm to Notre Dame’s Catholic identity.

Notre Dame playing a road game in a Southeastern Conference stadium is a very, very rare occurrence. So, in addition to the fact that this game matches two teams ranked in the top 10, it is a moment of enormous cultural significance and emotional impact. As an added note, Georgia defeated Notre Dame in the 1981 Sugar Bowl to win the national championship.

The Bulldogs are still trying to win their first national title since that moment, when Notre Dame was the opponent. The importance of this game to Georgia fans owns many different layers.

Now, to these teams and this game:

The best reference point for this contest is Notre Dame’s 2018 College Football Playoff semifinal game in the Cotton Bowl against Clemson. While Clemson is not Georgia, the Tigers offered a level of speed and depth which was comparable to what the 2019 Bulldogs possess.

Notre Dame’s defense played Clemson’s offense extremely well. It smothered Clemson in the first half. It lost some ground in the second half, but only because it got tired and worn down.

Why did that happen? Because Notre Dame’s offense couldn’t do anything at all against Clemson’s defense. Irish quarterback Ian Book could not find receivers downfield. He could not outrun Clemson’s defensive linemen. Notre Dame could not run the ball between the tackles. It had no escape route, no safe place, no chance.

That basic tension – Notre Dame having more than enough defense to be competitive but not nearly enough offense to win – is a reasonable way of looking at this game against Georgia.

This doesn’t guarantee that Saturday’s game will unfold in a manner similar to the Fighting Irish’s loss to Clemson. It does mean that Notre Dame’s offense has to answer some very tough questions against a ferocious Georgia defense.

When discussing any football game between high-profile teams, it is almost always the case that turnovers – who commits them and who doesn’t – will be the biggest key to the outcome. This is so frequently the reality of big games that turnovers are assumed to be paramount. It gets tiring and repetitive to mention them because every American already knows that going into a huge game.

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Nevertheless, I have to say it: Notre Dame will likely need multiple – and significant – Georgia turnovers to win this game.

By a significant turnover, I am referring to a turnover which occurs in the red zone, the part of the field inside the 20-yard line. Those turnovers either deprive a team of a touchdown or – if occurring in one’s own red zone – allow the opposition to score a touchdown. They create huge scoreboard swings. Notre Dame will probably need two of those plays if not more.

If this game has an even turnover count on both sides, and if any turnovers are relatively equal in their significance, Georgia appears to have the better players than a Notre Dame side which struggled for 2.5 quarters in its season opener at Louisville.

Given that Georgia quarterback Jake Fromm played Notre Dame two years ago and won as a freshman, his experience – not only against the Irish, but in big games over multiple seasons – should provide Georgia a steady hand at football’s most important position.

It is true that Ian Book is also experienced for Notre Dame, but he did not play in the 2017 Georgia game. If you were to size up the rosters, the talent on each side would not be overwhelmingly imbalanced, but Georgia – chiefly defined by its ability to play Alabama on even terms in each of the past two seasons – has earned the right to be seen as the clear favorite.

It is up to Notre Dame to make plays – and develop players – who can change the conversation…

“Between The Hedges.”

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